Water Bodies
Cara Farnan and Jennifer Moore
06 August - 03 September
Water Bodies is an exhibition which has materialised from a collaborative process between three practitioners and friends; Cara Farnan, Jennifer Moore and Emma Brennan. The exhibition and its associated events have been born out of an online dialogue that opened up between the three which was both specific and unique in its nature as it ran concurrently with initial Covid-19 quarantine and isolation practices.
Spilling, soaking, swimming, flowing, absorbing, dissolving, drifting, washing, clinging, falling, rushing, pulling, meandering, trickling, rippling, draining, pouring, ebbing, flooding, dripping, pouring, sinking, floating.
In our pool of communication, each of us became a channel or current for things to move through and between - various texts, podcasts, music, interviews, writings and essays, as well as personal writings, poetry, ideas, images, sounds and videos. The intimacy of friendship provided space for listening and sharing not only thoughts and interests but also feelings, frustrations and daily habits. This process of pouring out and absorbing not only intellectually but emotionally and physically has anchored this collaboration.
Water Bodies, as a physical exhibition, exists as one of a number of expressions of this dialogue, lifting the content and character of this ongoing conversation out of a virtual world and allowing the viewer to walk around within it. It is a show that relinquishes ideas of ownership, moving towards a desire for collaborative practice that is free of hierarchical structure, and exists more truly as a representation of flowing rituals of communicating, sharing and making.
This process has guided our collective focus toward the expanding and contracting flow of knowledge and feelings as they pass endlessly, shifting in shape, through interactions and exchanges between ourselves, places, things and people. Dancing boundaries. Opening bodies.
Cyclically, ideas of distance and desire have surfaced throughout our conversations as ever-present forces, both powerful and subtle, affecting the pace and depth of these flows of exchange. Over time, the colour blue and the medium of water became recurring symbols whose essence and nature has coloured our language and approach to materialising this show.
Cara Farnan is an artist based between Dublin, IE and Utrecht, NL. She is particularly curious about complex ways the body is involved in and influenced by intimate conversations, collaborations, and exchanges, both with other people and our environments. Her practice draws on a combination of writing, performance, sound, video, drawing and workshop facilitation. Recent Exhibitions include solo exhibition Sometimes the river flows backwards, curated by Róisín Bohan and Basic Space, Backwater Artists Group, Cork; PLATFORM 2019 curated by Sharon Murphy, Draíocht Blanchardstown; Some Concrete Possibilities curated by Síobhan Mooney, The Library Project and The Museum of Mythological Waterbeasts, Ormston House, Limerick. Since graduating from her BA (NCAD, 2016) Cara has worked in STEM & Art education, teaching classes and workshops, in schools, community cnetres, summer camps, galleries and online and she is currently studying for her MA in HKU, Utrecht.
Jennifer Moore is a multi-disciplinary artist who has developed her work within Irish DIY music and art communities and organisations in Ireland over the past four years. She holds a BA in Fine Art from NCAD, Dublin. She has completed collaborative residencies in Sirius Arts Centre Cork and Aras Einne Arts Centre on Inis Oirr Island. Her practice as a sound artist has grown out of a developing process of sharing musical and sonic research and production. She has performed, installed, composed and curated sound and music within DIY spaces as well as art institutions and organisations in Ireland, Portugal, the UK and Canada. Locally, she collaborates on various sound, video, map making, activism and writing projects with various Dublin based artists and communities. As an education practitioner, she has worked in youth arts education with schools, libraries, museums, galleries and community spaces over the past three years, focusing on creative practices and informal learning environments.
Cara and Jennifer have previously worked collaboratively to produce Our Field Guide, an open source map and field trip in 2019, and Word Divining Ritual, a participatory performance held at the opening of Sometimes the River Flows Backwards at Backwater Artist Studios in January 2020.
